Chinese backwaters
Beijing eating
Academic tourism
“Big sexy, mama”
professor Lin?
Who is this “linreigu” dude who writes things on my blog? Well, it’s me. It’s my Chinese name. Every foreigner who settles in China is given a Chinese name. All Chinese last names consist of one character. The choices for “Ringmar” were “Lin” or “Ma.” We picked the former. “Lin,” or 林, means “small forest” […]
age differences
Surely the age difference alone will determine the outcome of the American election. Obama is 46, McCain is 71. Americans like to think of themselves as young and forward-looking. How can they ever elect a man who so obviously can’t look forward to anything much? It is sometimes said that older people, especially women, prefer […]
re-education camp with lunch-box
NCTU, my university, monitors all downloads via Bittorrent and peer-2-peer networks. All illicit student activity is saved in a big log file which the administration can go through if they care to. They also monitor internet searches for what they suspect is illegal material. The more internet-savvy students don’t use Bittorrent but ftp transfers, but […]
dragon boats
Today is 端午節, duanwujie, or the Dragon Boat Festival, all over China. We went up to Taipei expecting a major cultural extravaganza. It was fun, but more like an ordinary sports competition, with lots of very sweaty team members. (Much to my surprise I found my two older daughters lingering over where the male paddlers […]
visiting Yuanmingyuan
BEIJING, Sunday. I’ve managed to squeeze in three visits to the Yuanmingyuan while I’ve been in Beijing. The Yuanmingyuan was the garden complex where the Chinese emperor spent most of his time. It was a sort of amusement park filled with temples, pagodas, palaces, libraries, lakes, labyrinths, trees, flowers and rockeries. It was also the […]
next stop the White House
I’m really, really pleased that Barack Obama got the nomination for the Democratic Party. Do we now dare to start hoping ….??? Imagine, an American president you can respect and look up to. Someone you listen to when he comes on the TV instead of shouting back at like we’ve done for so many years […]